Is "Uber for work" finally ready?
The tech is here, 15 operating partners validated the business need, now time to execute.
Matthew MottolaGet this in your inbox every week. Join 26,000+ subscribers.
Hey everyone,
I feel really good about Human Cloud. We just finished a dinner with 15 private equity operating partners.
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Beyond the interest, the use case is clear: PE firms and their portfolio companies need to build new products, service lines, and business models in new regions, and need to do this through their Human Cloud, not traditional talent channels.
The pain is even more clear: They can't do this with today's talent structure.
| • | FTEs can't adapt fast enough (they aren't going away, they're just the rare, 20% of the workforce core, the original "box of pizza" structure Bezos talked about) |
| • | Traditional staffing firms can't access the exact, specialized, and proven expertise in the right time. They also can't support business teams in their strategy and planning, just in the post req recruiting process. |
| • | Consultancies can sound smart but don't execute |
Now to AI: AI doesn't "change" anything. It accelerates what already needed to change, by making a non AI ready workforce glaringly obvious, and showing that layoffs aren't the answer (about a third of AI layoffs lead to rehiring).1
Which is where I get most excited: the solutions are finally ready.
The gap between "uber for work" and flexible talent as a fringe, less than 10% of total talent spend solution, was the assembly of solutions that could scale across organizations.
Marketplaces weren't enough. While Upwork and Fiverr IPO'ed, and trillions poured into venture and PE for marketplace related solutions, they didn't realize the hype. The terms gig and freelance are included in this.
2 solutions break this barrier: Specialized Talent Platforms and EORs.
| • | Specialized talent platforms are the sourcing. They're more than marketplaces. They have specialized expertise, and they use this to help the actual business leaders scope from problem statement to project plan. |
| • | EORs are the scaling. They own the risk. They manage common HR and Procurement needs. They are the "have your cake and eat it too" solution. |
The combination, this is where all organizations can truly adapt their human workforce to their AI needs.
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These two solutions are EXACTLY who Human Cloud is built for buyers to find and connect to. And everything on the platform is built to drive this connection - whether automating research, automating custom quotes, or using HC Score as the open sourced ranking algorithm to define top solutions across each segment.
Which brings up next month - who will be at SIA Healthcare in Dallas on November 9 to 11? We'll be hosting a dinner with FoxHire, the leading EOR for healthcare and higher ed.
- Matt
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CEO of Human Cloud. 4x entrepreneur, angel investor, author of The Human Cloud (w/ HarperCollins), with experience advising companies like Microsoft, Deloitte, and G7 governments on how to use flexible talent. |
| PS: This Thursday at 12 PM ET is our monthly community call. Ian Davidson on candidate profiles that convert, Charlie McGinn on how EORs partner with sourcing solutions, and our SIA and PEI deep dive. Save your spot » |
Featured Event
HC Community Call: Where flexible talent fits
This Thursday, October 29 · 12:00 PM ET · Zoom · Members only
We open with the SIA and PEI deep dive: what we heard at CollabX and from the operating partners in New York, and where flexible talent actually fits. Then two experts every solution should meet right now.
Featuring
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| Save your seat » |
Shoutouts!
Wins from across the community over the last month. Keep them coming.
Customers Verified
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CashTools was verified as a customer of tech talent platform beecrowd. |
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T-Mobile was verified as a customer of open innovation platform Topcoder. |
Business Cases
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beecrowd verified a business case with CashTools. It found and vetted the AI engineers CashTools needed to build its treasury platform, cutting the time to stand up technical capacity in half. |
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Marketing talent platform Wripple verified a business case with a consumer products company. One of its video editors turned a pile of campaign assets into a 90-second sizzle reel the client immediately entered for awards. |
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Topcoder verified a business case with a medical device company. A global design challenge redesigned the mobile app its clinical teams use to log surgical data, in 8 days. |
Add yours with the Business Case Agent »
Kudos
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beecrowd earned kudos from Guilherme Franco, CEO at CashTools: "beecrowd quickly understood our needs and connected us with highly qualified tech professionals." |
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Healthcare EOR FoxHire earned kudos from Cynthia Strzelecki, Co-Owner: "It is very easy to reach our customer service contact and she is very responsive." |
Collect yours with the Kudos Agent »
Industry Insights
Deals & M&A
| • SAP is buying TechWolf, the skills-intelligence platform, to put a live map of work and skills under SuccessFactors and its AI agents. Closes in Q4.2 |
| • MentorcliQ acquired Neobrain, a Paris skills-intelligence firm, the second skills-data deal in a week.3 |
| • SoftBank is weighing an $18 billion deal for Allied Universal, one of the largest labor-heavy services workforces in the world.4 |
| • iFood bought Caju, bringing HR and benefits tooling to Brazil's largest flexible workforce.5 |
| • Amplified People Group acquired Higher, more consolidation in talent services.6 |
| • atwork bought Cubia to pair AI with 26 years of employee survey data in the DACH market.7 |
Product Launches & Reports
| • Deel launched Pangaea, AI models it says cut the cost of HR and payroll answers by 98%.8 |
| • SourceNow launched a workforce supplier marketplace that connects staffing suppliers directly with enterprise buyers.9 |
| • Firstwork raised $15 million to automate frontline worker onboarding.10 |
| • Korn Ferry says 81% of employers plan to increase early-career hiring, and 76% say entry-level jobs are not disappearing.11 |
Signals Worth Knowing
| • Robert Half's talent solutions grew for the first time since 2022, up 2% in Q3.12 |
| • Public staffing margins fell to 26.2% in 2025, from a 28.1% high in 2022, at 13 of the 14 firms SIA tracks. Clients are pushing for pricing concessions.13 |
| • Barclays is cutting 5,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce, and credited AI.14 |
| • Goldman Sachs says AI could displace 1 in 11 US workers, with the losses concentrated in the next downturn.15 |
| • Anthropic's junior technical hires fell from 27% to 9% of hiring, while its AI agents work six times the hours of their human handlers.16 |
| • A bill would lift the H-1B salary floor to nearly $140,000 for some workers, and Infosys, TCS and Cognizant already cut their lottery registrations.17,18 |
| • A proposed $70,000 OPT fee would reprice hiring international graduates.19 |
| • eBay is cutting 1,000 jobs in its second round of 2026 layoffs.20 |
Industry Events
| • HC Community Call · Oct 29 · Zoom · Save your seat » |
| • EOR Global Summit · Nov 3 to 4 · London, UK |
| • SIA Healthcare Staffing Summit · Nov 9 to 11 · Arlington, TX |
| • HC Executive Dinner at the Healthcare Staffing Summit, hosted with FoxHire · Nov 10 · Arlington, TX · Request a seat » |
| • Future of Work Europe · Nov 18 to 19 · London, UK |
Sources
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